Nobody could. And we do not need any mediator. Honor is not negotiable! Our homeland is not negotiable! Dignity is not negotiable! Independence, sovereignty, history and glory are not negotiable! (PROLONGED APPLAUSE)

There would be no negotiating with us for a cessation of bombings. I will advance that if they started bombing some day, they would have to continue for a hundred years if it was a war from the air they wanted to make; or they would have to stop dropping bombs because as long as there were a few combatants still alive in this country, they would be forced to send ground troops. I would like to know what would happen if they did that.

As I was saying, we do not do anything foolish that they can use as an excuse. You can see how patient we have been with that [Guantanamo] base. It is a small piece of Cuban land and we have every right to have it back. The people here have had quite a radical view of the issue. Not us, we are patient. We say: "No, it is much more important to liberate the world than to liberate that beloved piece of land that we will never give up." They would have loved it if we had started a strong national movement claiming the base in order to have an easy pretext for their adventures, to deceive US and world public opinion, to say that we have attacked them. Before concluding, I will show you some things in this respect. But they have never had the remotest chance of saying that Cuba has been hostile or aggressive toward the American military personnel stationed there.

What can they say about us on humanitarian issues? That we have not a single illiterate, that we have not a single child without a school, not a single person without medical care. That there are no beggars here although there are sometimes irresponsible families who send out their children on errands. That is associated with tourism and it affects, if not our identity, at least our honor. There is nobody abandoned in the streets.

What can they say? That we have a massive number of excellent doctors as I have been telling you about. What else can they say? That we can save hundreds of thousands of lives each year in our hemisphere and in Africa.

What did we tell the Haitians? That we are willing to put forward a plan to save some 30,000 lives a year, 25,000 of them children's lives.

What was our proposal to the Central Americans? A plan to save, every year, as many lives as the hurricane took, if it actually took 30,000. That figure decreased later because many that were missing began to show up. As we said, the lives that could be saved every year could be as many as those taken by the hurricane, if the highest figure announced was true --and that is a conservative estimate. The truth is that, on that program, we were ready to contribute the required staff and we asked that any industrial country, no matter which, contribute the drugs. Why is it that all those spending so many billions on bombs and genocide do not use a little money to save lives?

I told you the other day about how they attributed loathsome things to us and I mentioned a number of them. I told you and I will repeat it now: Not a single person is tortured in this country! Not a single political assassination! Not a single vanished person! Forty years have already passed since the triumph of the Revolution despite all the conspiracies and all the efforts made to divide us, to subvert the Revolution. They have crashed against our people’s iron-like unity and patriotism, against their political culture. All this under extremely difficult circumstances.

I am absolutely certain that very few people would resist the almost 10 years that we have resisted after loosing all our markets and supply sources and with a tightened blockade. They underestimated us.

Also, if they carried out one of the acts of madness mentioned, they would be underestimating us and I do not think they underestimate us quite that much, I really do not. I will say no more. We are not defending ourselves here but the right of other peoples who do not have our possibilities or our unity or the fighting capacity that we have as an organized and prepared people.

I already told you, and I am not dramatizing, that we have no need for that kind of new specialist who emerged from this war in Yugoslavia with the category of mediator. They can come only to report that they will proceed to suspend the bombings or withdraw troops or to cease all hostilities. This much we dare say: No weapon has been invented that can conquer man! We are not afraid of those repulsive and cowardly wars where they do not risk a single life! They are nauseating, disgusting but they only make us better socialists and better revolutionaries. That is all. (APPLAUSE)

I was telling you that an important battle was fought at the United Nations. Here is the famous Resolution. They are incorrigible cheats, mediocre and incompetent politicians. I brought some papers but I will just use a few things I underlined.

Well, this is the agreement that was passed, the draft Resolution. Who sponsored it? Germany, a NATO country; Canada, a NATO country; the United States, a leading country and chief of NATO; the Russians are among the sponsors because they reached previous agreements in the Group of Eight but they made a critical speech there; France, a NATO country; Italy, a NATO country; the Netherlands, a NATO country; the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a NATO country. I counted them and I saw that there were seven NATO countries among the 12 sponsors of the draft in the Security Council --seven countries involved in the aggression.

There was also, Gabon, a French neocolonial dominion and Slovenia, a former Yugoslav republic. This was the first one that --heedless of the constitutional rules set forth when the Yugoslav Federation was created recognizing the right to secession and the procedures to accomplish it-- encouraged by Germany and Austria unilaterally declared its independence avoiding any legal formality. Yes, there had undoubtedly been previous groundwork. On the other hand, it was disintegration time!

One of the republics separated constitutionally through a plebiscite. That was Macedonia, but Slovenia declared its independence on June 25, 1991. In Europe, there were doubts over what to do. Later on came Croatia's declaration of independence, that is, two splits avoiding all constitutional procedures. And this, as our ambassador to the United Nations said, was promoted by some European countries and later unanimously supported by the West.

This is important because when that country emerged --the heroic Yugoslavia that kept even Hitler's troops at bay-- the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia lived in peace, despite centuries-old national, ethnic, cultural and religious struggles. That area of Yugoslavia, between the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was a battlefield. It is well known story that the Ottomans reached the outskirts of Vienna.

We have been reading a lot of background information and, really, there were people who contributed to the so-called ethnic wars that broke out in the 1990s, people who helped, certainly not on purpose since I do not attribute it to a premeditated and cynical concept but to irresponsible acts. Anyway, they unleashed the disintegration of Yugoslavia and it all began, as I said, with Slovenia on June 25, 1991 when avoiding any legal procedure Slovenia declared its independence and its leaders took command of the troops corresponding to that republic, since every republic had its self-defense troops; they were about 40,000 men. As I understand it, some 2,000 young draftees from the neighboring Croatian republic left for Slovenia. There was practically no combat. There were only such pressures.

The disease began to spread. Another republic, Croatia, did the same. In that case, more violent conflicts broke out.

What happened? These republics could very well have followed the constitutional procedures. Yugoslavia was no longer a socialist country. It was a country that had established all the capitalist and market standards. It was not the old Yugoslavia of [Marshall] Tito and of a later period. It was a capitalist country with the multi-party system officially recommended by the West.

A very influential factor was that in 1981, ten years before this happened, Slovenia’s GDP was five times the per capita GDP of the rest of Yugoslavia. They began to feel that the poorer republics were a burden and they were encouraged to move toward closer economic integration with the West. Some supported them --as I said-- some gave them weapons at that stage, even before they had declared independent. One of their leaders has admitted this much.

On June 21, 1996, in a program on the Ljubljana television specially devoted to the fifth anniversary of independence, President Kucan conceded that "Slovenia was already building up its army before 1990 in anticipation of a war." In the same interview, the Slovene president added: "The European Union played a great role in making possible the breakup from Yugoslavia."

This is real history. I do not want to offend anybody nor do I mean to hurt anyone. I abide by the facts, the historical facts that we have been looking at again together with some information we already had when this conflict broke out.

It was irresponsible and truly criminal to encourage and support the disintegration of that country which had achieved the miracle of living in peace for 45 years.

There were different factors bearing on the situation there, both economic and of a nationalist character, and there were a lot of people in Europe who understood the potential consequences. I have spoken with European leaders, European politicians who understood that this was very risky. However, one day two countries, specifically Germany and Austria, officially recognized Slovenia and Croatia and, immediately, the rest of Europe followed, thus beginning all sorts of conflicts that we now know about.

There were difficulties in Kosovo where there was a strong nationalist movement. The Albanian Kosovars or Kosovar Albanians were already a large majority. I remember that even when [Marshall] Tito was alive, many Serbs had migrated to Serbia because they felt unsafe. In 1974, the Constitution was amended and Kosovo was granted autonomy --I have not read that Constitution-- but that is precisely the Serbs’ birthplace. There are many historical sites there that they value highly. Some of those sites have suffered with the bombings. But I do not know whether that Constitution --that I am trying to obtain-- which granted autonomy to the Kosovo province, gave it the right to secession, as it did with the republics. Anyway, it was not declared a republic but an autonomous province. I assume that it did not have that right recognized and that, in any case, there would have been a process, like in Macedonia.

What began in 1991 has continued until today and nobody knows when it will end. There were all sorts of wars and blood was unquestionably shed from both sides. That is the truth, as I see it.

Now then, instead of starting to supposedly straighten out those countries, it would have been better if they had not been disrupted, if they had not been disorganized. Of course, living standards were largely different in Macedonia and Slovenia, very different. There was a Constitution by virtue of which the Socialist Federal Republic was established. It had the word "socialist" before but more or less after the perestroika it was removed, that much is clear. Its present name is Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. That is, the name of what is left because what remained was Serbia and Montenegro since Kosovo was not a republic. What is left is called the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, is it not? I have some papers here but I will not be looking for the exact name. We even have here the UN Security Council resolution: "Federal Republic of Yugoslavia," that’s it. The word "socialist" was removed long ago.

The government may call itself socialist because you know that there are many governments where there are socialist parties but the countries are not socialist. There are socialist parties in many places and in the government, but this does not mean that the country is socialist or that it plans to be so. They are countries with free enterprise, neo-liberalization, pure capitalism.

As for Yugoslavia, our position is based on principles, both with respect to Serbs and with respect to Kosovars. We defend their right to autonomy. Moreover, we defend not only their right to have their own culture, their religious beliefs, their national rights and feelings but also if one day the Kosovars of all ethnic groups and the rest of Serbia decided to separate peacefully and democratically, once an equitable and just peace has been achieved and not one imposed from outside by means of war, we would support them.

No one knows what will happen with Montenegro. During the war Montenegro behaved the best it could for NATO's taste. It volunteered some criticisms, some opposition, and perhaps that is why its quota of bombs was much lower than Serbia’s. I have read many messages sent by the aggressors to Montenegro encouraging it to secede and it was accorded special treatment during the war. All the bombs were for Serbia.

When the agreement reached by the Group of Eight refers to substantial autonomy for the Kosovars, one could ask: Does it mean the kind of autonomy that Macedonia used to have? We do not know but, in that case, there would be a peaceful road to independence. There are many aspects on which Serbs and Kosovars can agree. It is beyond question that most of the Kosovo population are not Serbs. The Serbs constitute a minority and it is very likely that after this dreadful war Serb civilians will follow the Serb troops out. It is apparent. News have come that they were exhuming their dead because it is part of their traditions to migrate with the remains of their ancestors.

I do not know what they will do. Messages are being sent discouraging a massive migration and violence against the Serbs living there. Those risks exist at the moment. Many are claiming victory but, who is accepting blame for all the factors that led to this situation and all the ethnic conflicts? A horrendous crime they are calling a victory. A victory they would have to be ashamed of because from the moral point of view if we are to talk about victory and defeat, the morally defeated were those who waged a cowardly war and dropped 23,000 bombs over Serbia, some of the most sophisticated, destructive and technologically advanced bombs. What a victory!

Our UN ambassador estimated that the NATO countries’ GDP is 1,013 times greater than Serbia’s and that the Alliance member countries have 43 times more regular troops. But, regular troops are useless in an air war like it was waged there. The difference was zero to infinite. Bomber planes arriving from the United States were able to drop bombs from great distances without running the slightest risk. It was a war that lasted 80 days and in which 23,000 bombs were launched against a country while the aggressors did not have a single combat casualty. It was the first time in history that something like that happened.

It must be said that this war, of which nobody can be proud, is a cowardly war, the most cowardly of all wars ever waged. The alleged victory was morally Pyrrhic and the war a genocide.

Why was it a genocide? What is a genocide? The attempt to exterminate a population: you either surrender or face extermination. How long were the bombings going to last? They were talking of up to October or November but that was idle talk. We know very well how many European leaders felt. Many newspaper articles were published on the growing discontent and opposition to the bombings in Europe and even in the United States. And there was even greater opposition to ground troops involvement. In my view, NATO was in no condition to continue that bombing much longer. Neither Europe nor the world would have tolerated it. NATO would have broken apart if it had persisted on that path.

As I said that we had three comrades there with a cell phone, working day and night, round the clock, under the bombs and with the air-raid sirens, even when there was no electric power. We always asked them about the morale of the population, about the prevailing spirit. The people there covered the bridges with crowds; men, women and children went there so that they would not be destroyed. That was the case of the last bridge standing in Belgrade.

The NATO planes attacked all the bridges and there were times when it mostly attacked the electrical network. It destroyed virtually all the power plants leaving millions without light and energy. Imagine a house, if they had something to cook, how could they if there was no fuel, no light, no water? All those pumping systems operate with electricity. Take away the electricity and the cities are left without water. Destroy all the bridges and the cities are left without any supplies whatsoever.

When the electrical service, for example, is rendered useless a whole lot of basic services become useless too. Imagine intensive-care units without electricity or water; hospitals without electricity or water; schools without electricity or water; households, medical and educational facilities, all facilities and supplies cut off. So, it was not a war against the military, it was a war against the civilian population.

Then it occurred to Marshall Solana to make a solemn statement, that "electric facilities were absolutely military objectives". No one should be so arbitrary with words, ideas and concepts to justify a genocide. All means of life were under attack. The main workplaces were destroyed so half a million Serb workers were left jobless and it is not known how many more will be. Hospitals, schools, embassies, prisons, Kosovar convoys were attacked. They said that these had been failures.

I remember reading a dispatch about a General in the British air force who, after 15 or 20 days of bombing, said: "Well, it is just that our pilots have been very restricted up to now. Now, each plane will simply go hunting a target." They went hunting targets, whether it was a convoy of Kosovar refugees they attacked mistaken for Serb troops, or a prison where they killed 87 people; also, maternity and pediatric hospitals. There is a very long list of such incidents. Above all, admitting that a bomb might have been dropped by mistake, the destruction of all the bridges and electric systems could not be, and was not, a mistake.

What would have happened if the Serbs had continued resisting? How long could they have prolonged such barbarian actions?

They UN Security Council adopted a draft resolution. Of its 12 sponsors, seven belong to NATO, another is a neo-colony of one of the seven NATO co-sponsors and another one triggered the disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991. There is also Japan, a member of the group of the seven richest countries --and this draft was by the Group of Seven-- and the Russian Federation, which took part in the meeting of the Group of Seven plus Russia that agreed on a peace plan and sent its emissaries to Belgrade to submit it and Ukraine, a Slav country separated from Russia although it keeps normal relations with it and very good relations with NATO. These are the 12 sponsors of the draft resolution submitted to the UN Security Council and produced, in this case, by the Group of Eight.

What happened can be seen clearly, in strict chronological order.